I am nobody but myself

“All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself”.

Ralph Ellison, “Battle Royal”

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Published by Murtadha

"My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves"
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4 thoughts on “I am nobody but myself”

Yeah, I remembered that short story. It’s true that trying to create our identity through what others’ perception of us somehow doesn’t work, and in the end we find out that only we can really answer the questions “who am I?” “what am I doing” and “why am I here?”

Thanks for posting that passage. Made me remember those troubled teenage nights crying my eyes out because of an identity crisis.